Airport rolls out biometric-based self-boarding facility
Passengers at the Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) will soon have the option of boarding their flight without producing travel documents at each touch point, with the KIA rolling out a biometric-based self-boarding facility. Vistara passengers travelling from Bengaluru to Mumbai on Monday were the first to experience paperless travel, a facility that the airline expects to expand to all its flights out of the city by the end of October. For paperless boarding, a passenger has to enroll their ID, facial biometric data and flight details at a kiosk manned by CISF personnel before entering the terminal area.vThereafter, the passenger will be verified at every touch point including baggage drop, security hold and boarding gate by the facial biometric-based technology.
Early next year
Bangalore International Airport Limited (BIAL), KIA’s operator, expects to deploy the paperless biometric system at over 350 passenger touch points in Terminal 1 with the completion of the final phase of the project early next year, BIAL said in a statement on Tuesday. “Over the next few months, this process is expected to be integrated with check-in / self-bag-drop to include other domestic and international airlines at the Bengaluru Airport,” BIAL said. “In the final stage, this technology will be integrated with the Digi Yatra Central Platform that is currently being architectured by the Central Government’s Digi Yatra Foundation.” BIAL asserted that the biometric data would be used only for authentication and verification of passengers to assist the boarding process and not for recognition. “The process offers the highest degree of safety and security while ensuring stringent standards of safety,” the airport operator said, adding that passenger data would be deleted within a few hours of flight completion. “Once we trial the full end-to-end process successfully and integrate it into the Digi Yatra Platform, the technology and process will be used extensively for seamless flow in our upcoming Terminal 2 Project as well,” Hari Marar, MD and CEO of BIAL, said in the statement.